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In my opinion, most designers’ weak spot is analysis. But we can fix that! The analysis is the main thing that separates UX from other types of design, and it makes you extremely valuable. It literally pays to be good at it.So, ask yourself: • Are you using data to prove that you are right, or to learn the truth? • Are you looking for subjective opinions or objective facts? • Have you collected information that can give you those types of answers? • Do you know why users do that or are you interpreting their behavior? • Are you looking at absolute numbers or relative improvements? • How will you measure this? Are you measuring the right things? • Are you looking for bad results, too? Why not? • How can you use this analysis to make improvements?
There is a huge difference between writing brand copy (text) and writing UX copy. Brand copy supports the image and values of the company. UX copy gets shit done as directly and simply as possible. Ask yourself: Does it sound confident and tell the user what to do? • Does it motivate the user to complete their goal? Is that what we want? • Is the biggest text the most important text? Why not? • Does it inform the user or does it assume that they already understand? • Does it reduce anxiety? • Is it clear, direct, simple, and functional?
As a UX designer, your definition of “design” will be much less artistic than a lot of designers. Whether you “like it” is irrelevant. In UX, the design is how it works, and it’s something you can prove; it’s not a matter of style. Ask yourself: • Do users think it looks good? Do they trust it immediately? • Does it communicate the purpose and function without words? • Does it represent the brand? Does it all feel like the same site? • Does the design lead the user’s eyes to the right places? How do you know? • Do the colors, shapes, and typography help people find what they want and improve the usability of the details? • Do clickable things look different than non clickable things?
If user psychology is mostly subconscious, usability is mostly conscious. You know when something is confusing. There are cases where it is more fun if something is hard—like a game—but for everything else, we want it to be so easy that everyone could use it. Ask yourself: Could you get the job done with less input from the user? • Are there any user mistakes you could prevent? (Hint: Yes, there are.) • Are you being clear and direct, or is this a little too clever? • Is it easy to find (good), hard to miss (better), or subconsciously expected (best)? • Are you working with the user’s assumptions or against them? • Have you provided everything the user needs to know? • Could you solve this just as well by doing something more common? • Are you basing your decisions on your own logic or categories, or the user’s intuition? How do you know? • If the user doesn’t read the fine print, does it still work/make sense?
A user’s mind is complex. You should know; you have one, (I assume). UXers work with subjective thoughts and feelings a lot; they can make or break your results. And the designer must ignore their own psychology sometimes, too, and that’s hard! Ask yourself: • What is the user’s motivation to be here in the first place? • How does this make them feel? • How much work does the user have to do to get what they want? • What habits are created if they do this over and over? • What do they expect when they click this? • Are you assuming they know something that they haven’t learned yet? • Is this something they want to do again? Why? How often? • Are you thinking of the user’s wants and needs, or your own? • How are you rewarding good behavior?
Users spend most of their time on other sites, and they prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know. Users will transfer expectations they have built around one familiar product to another that appears similar. By leveraging existing mental models, we can create superior user experiences in which the users can focus on their tasks rather than on learning new models. When making changes, minimize discord by empowering users to continue using a familiar version for a limited time.
Jakob’s law (also known as “Jakob’s law of the internet user experience”) was put forth in 2000 by usability expert Jakob Nielsen, who described the tendency for users to develop an expectation of design conventions based on their cumulative experience from other websites. This observation, which Nielsen describes as a law of human nature, encourages designers to follow common design conventions, enabling users to focus more on the site’s content, message, or product. In contrast, uncommon conventions can lead to people becoming frustrated, confused, and more likely to abandon their tasks and leave because the interface does not match up with their understanding of how things should work. The cumulative experience that Nielsen refers to is helpful for people when visiting a new website or using a new product because it informs their understanding of how things work and what’s possible. This underlying factor is perhaps one of the most important in user experience, and it is directly related to a psychological concept known as mental models.
A mental model is what we think we know about a system, especially about how it works. Whether it’s a digital system such as a website or a physical system such as a checkout line in a retail store, we form a model of how a system works, and then we apply that model to new situations where the system is similar. In other words, we use the knowledge we already have from past experiences when interacting with something new. Mental models are valuable for designers because we can match our designs to our users’ mental models to improve their experience by enabling them to easily transfer their knowledge from one product or experience to another, without the need to first take the time to understand how the new system works. Good user experiences are made possible when the design of a product or service is in alignment with the user’s mental model. The task of shrinking the gap between our own mental models and those of the users is one of the biggest challenges we face, and to achieve this goal we use a variety of methods: user interviews, personas, journey maps, empathy maps, and more. The point of these various methods is to gain a deeper insight into not only the goals and objectives of our users but also users’ preexisting mental models and how all of these factors apply to the product or experience we are designing.
The earlier you test, the easier it is to make changes and thus the greater impact the testing has on the eventual quality of the product.
Don’t wait for a fully formed product — you can test design mock-ups and semi-functional prototypes (even low-fidelity ones) as long as you can explain to test participants what’s required from them. Once you’ve defined which user tasks should be tested, start validate your design. You can embrace guerilla usability testing. When you have a prototype, step out of your office, find people who are at least similar to your target users and begin testing!
Be crystal clear on your goals. Make sure you only ask questions you need answered. Before starting user testing, you’ll need to ask yourself: “What do I need to know from this test?” and then, once you understand what you need to know, you can write your questionnaire or survey with that objective in mind.
Closed questions have a limited choice of answers. These may be binary (yes/no) or multiple choice. Open-ended questions let you discover things you never thought of and let you learn the language of customers.
A lot of designers think about the design process as a linear process which starts with user research, has a phase of prototyping, and ends up with testing. However, it should be treated as a dynamic process. Regular user feedback should be at the heart of UX design process. Testing, as much as coding, designing or gathering requirements, requires its intended place in the iterative loop of product design and development. It’s important to have user tests at each interval of this process if the resources are available.
Validate your design based on tests with real users. Ensure you test with users who aren’t only your friends or family! You need independent and unbiased users. Tip: When it comes to UX testing, sometimes it’s important to start with the idea of a user in your worst case scenario (e.g. someone who knows nothing about your product, is distracted when they onboard, etc). By watching that person use your product, you can quickly identify areas where the app is not simple or clear enough.
When setting tasks for users, it’s tempting to ask what they think of your product or to ask them to score every element. However, it’s better to write tasks for users to attempt, so you capture in-the-moment, natural feedback at the point of interaction. For example, if you test a redesigned version of website’s homepage: Bad: What do you think of our website? Out of the 10, how did you find the usability of the web service? Better: Where would you click first when you land on homepage?
It’s important to mark the distinction between listening to users and observing users. While both methods will provide UX designers with valuable information, the mistake many UX designers make is to focus too heavily on listening. Observing users can uncover a lot more in a lot less time.
It is important to involve the whole product team in the testing event. Having the opportunity to observe the user will help the whole team understand the usability problems and to empathize with the user. Tips: If it’s impossible for all team members to join the testing session, you can record a video of the testing session and share it with your colleagues. Everyone involved in a test should make notes and record what they feel they’ve learned. You want to take these notes and summarize them at the end of the day.
Many companies don’t test their product at all or test them only after release because they fear it would be too expensive and would take too long. The truth is that testing don’t need to be time consuming or expensive. NNGroup research found that: Testing with 5 users generally unveils 85% of usability problems. Thus, you can bring up to the group of users together and work with the one-on-one as they play with the prototype. Don’t Try To Solve Everything At Once! It’s simply impossible to do that. Instead, fix the biggest (the most important) problems and then test again. The best testing is when you solve a problem to the best of your ability, ship the product, gather feedback and watch how it’s used, and then iterate accordingly. Conclusion Testing isn’t something you can afford to bypass, as even a simple round of testing could make or break your product idea. Thus, Test early, test often!
User research is a reality check. It tells you what really happens when people use computers. You can speculate on what customers want, or you can find out. The latter is the more fruitful approach. Research offers an understanding of how users behave online, and is a solid foundation on which to build a design. I still recommend that you user test your own design: any time you have a new idea, build a paper prototype and test it so that you don't waste money implementing ideas that don't work. But, if you start with design ideas that are based on the actual behavior of real human beings, you'll have considerably fewer usability problems than if you target a design at a hypothetical or idealized user. It can be overwhelming at first to see a long list of new research findings. Try to process them in small bites. For example, look at your homepage or a typical content page in light of the new findings. Print out a copy and circle each design element that might violate a design guideline or cause users problems. Make general issues concrete by applying them to a familiar example. This is always a good way to build up understanding that can help you in future design projects. You can also use research findings as a checklist: go through your own design one guideline at a time and see whether you comply. Whenever you're in violation of an established usability finding, you can dig deeper into that finding's underlying user research and learn more about it. With your new knowledge, you might decide to fix your design to make it compliant with users' typical behavior. Or, of course, you might disagree with the research findings.
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